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“My mix was awful.” I have heard that statement more times than I would care to admit. There is something about the monitor mix that has the ability to hinder a worship set or make it excel. It should not, but it does. We have given some attention to our monitor mixes and have a system down pretty well. We try to make the process simple and quick.

First some preliminaries and then our practical “how-to.”

Prelim:

You need to determine the following:

1. Number of monitor mixes you will use.
2. Who will share mixes.
3. Where monitors are run (front of house position, or from stage).


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 The more you are in front of people, the more criticism you get. It comes with the territory. If you can’t deal with it properly, it can eat you alive. Criticism will come. Count on it.

When asked what it was like to be famous, Chris Tomlin said that it used to be nobody offered him any advice or criticism. The more that he becomes known, the more people criticize him. Criticism has happened to you as well. You may not know it, but they talk about you when you are not listening. Everyone is a critic. Paranoid yet? Relax, it’s all part of the job. So, how do you deal with criticism?

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“Worship Wars.” Most of the time worship wars are discussed, they are in the context of traditional music people warring against a the peeps who prefer a more culturally relevant form of music. They lob grenades back and forth until one finally gives up.

Like it or not, conflict also makes it’s way into the worship team. It crops up announced and can take us by surprise. So, how do we deal with band conflict?

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 “What you do between the songs are as important as the songs themselves.”

This advice was given to me about 10 years ago from an influential worship leader. It may be a bit overstated, but often times worship leaders give little thought to the transitions. That is, until the transitions come.

For some reason, I am hyper-sensitive to transitions. Maybe that is because when a transition goes bad, I feel yanked out my prayer and worship. All of a sudden, the drastic change calls attention to itself and the worship flow takes a jolt.

I have seen it done poorly and done it poorly myself. It’s a bad feeling to come to the end of a song and realize the coming transition is going to taste like a swig of lemonade after a bowl of ice cream. Here are some ideas on a few things to do between songs.

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 If I was stranded on a deserted island and needed to lead worship, what would I need? Hmm, probably nothing. I would lead others in a worshipful swim around the island and drink coconut juice and sing acapella by the fire as we boiled some fresh lobster. But, I digress. It’s cold here in Indiana and a little beach dreaming never hurt anyone!

So, on with the show. Here are my must haves, in no particular order:

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